I woke up the other day and was super confused why my entire X timeline was about a Squirrel. So in 2017, a NY dude rescued Peanut the squirrel after a car accident. Peanut became a TikTok star due to its cute antics.
Fast forward to Oct 30, 2024: citing "unlawful possession", officials took away Peanut. Some anonymous neighbor snitched. The officials euthanized the squirrel due to rabies concerns.
Everyone, from politicians to Elon Musk, was outraged. The event represented "government overreach."
Meanwhile, crypto did its thing: launched $PNUT and turned it into a multi-million memecoin.
RIP Peanut, you were too pure for this timeline. p.s. Remember to vote in the U.S. elections if you can! I'm not gonna shill any candidates, and keep my opinions to myself. I'm here to help you keep up with Crypto and nothing else.
Here's what we got today:
Virtuals Protocol. Pump.fun for AI Agents.
Principle or profit? How much should ETH researchers get paid?
Around the web. Scroll L2 released a new SDK, Base shipped fraud proofs, Time.fun migrated to Solana, and more.
Today's email is brought to you by Swell — the L2 for restaking.
Here's your Edge 🗡️!
Mindshare Data
The mindshare for "ai agents" over the past 3 months has exploded
What if you could buy a share of famous influencer? No, I'm not talking about buying a share of Kim Kardashian, or even a share of a Crypto KOL (like Friend.tech). We all know that A.I. is starting to eat everything up. Now there are starting to become A.I. Celebrities. Here's an example of one named Luna.
Source: Luna's Livestream
Don't dismiss it just because they're not humans. These AI influencers can present themselves online using text, voice, and video — just like humans. They can run live streams, post on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, chat on Telegram, and more. They can even act as NPCs in video games.
In the future, these AI celebrities might become indistinguishable from real-life celebrities. (Right now, they only support 3D animation.) They'll potentially become even better entertainers than current human celebrities - the bar's not that high guys.
What is Virtual Protocol? Virtual Protocol is a platform for anyone to easily create AI agents. Anyone can buy tokens of these agents as well.
We first talked about it on October 24th. Since then, $VIRTUAL is up 87%.
Sounds fair enough. But why am I still excited about it?
#1. Actual Dope AIs. Many tokens within the current AI Agent narrative aren't actually AI agents. Even $GOAT, the leader of the AI Agent meta, isn't "technically connected" to an AI agent. It was a just memecoin shilled by the AI Agent.
The agents on Virtual Protocol are AI agents that can autonomously plan and achieve goals. They can learn from feedback and even have the ability to generate revenue using on-chain wallets.
#2. New Interface for Launching AIs. Pump.fun is a proven interface for launching memecoins. Virtual Protocol has a similar interface for launching AI agents, making launching AI agents as easy as launching memecoins.
Source: fun.virtuals.io
#3. Gamification. New tokens unlock new features whenever they hit milestones in market cap:
$4.2K MC - Forum Chat
$420K MC - X (Twitter)
$6.9M MC - Telegram Chat
$69M MC - Sentient Terminal
$126M MC - On-chain Wallet
This gives people a reason to buy a token. Did you see the ticker at $400K market cap? You might want to buy it because the agent will get a Twitter account to shill itself when it hits $420K market cap.
What if you come late and the token is already at $100M market cap? No worries—the project will get an on-chain wallet when it hits $120M. At that point, the AI can deploy capital and do whatever it wants.
#4. Memecoins 2.0. Virtual Protocol allows degens to launch memecoins as AI agents. Imagine DOGE and PEPE interacting with people through X, TikTok, livestreams, and more.
All these AI models will be unique. The community can train and improve the intelligence and personality of the models. It'll remove low-effort pump and dumps as well.
This is already happening. Peanut the Squirrel was a social media favorite for his heartwarming story with his owner, Mark. After the government euthanized him, Peanut became an internet sensation. A memecoin + AI agent was created in his honor. His Twitter account is here:
#5. Virtual Influencer Market. This is a big sector projected to grow to around $45B by 2030, according to TradFi. Virtual Protocol is creating virtual influencers that can tap into this market.
While this is a long-term play, we're seeing the proto-versions of AI influencers now.
Want an example of a current top virtual influencer? Check out LUNA. Here are some examples of what she can do. LUNA aims to reach a $40.9B market cap.
The AI Agent narrative has brought attention to Virtuals Protocol, and they've capitalized on that attention to tap into the memecoin narrative.
Their new interface was launched on November 1st. While the protocol doesn't have Pump.fun-level metrics, there is some activity:
Over 28.7M $VIRTUAL was spent on buying agent tokens.
Over 15.6M $VIRTUAL deposited in LP pools of various agent tokens.
308 agent tokens deployed on Uniswap. (This only happens once the market cap crosses $420K.)
Now, we just have to see if they'll manage to find product-market fit. If it becomes the Pump.fun of Base, it has great potential. Transparency: This isn't a sponsored piece. I hold tokens of this that I bought at retail price. This is me writing about something I think is cool.
Proof of Restake, the mechanism underpinning Swell L2, uses liquid restaked assets for the infrastructure securing the chain itself. In summary, the value created by the L2 will be directed to the stakers.
It sets a new and unique flywheel that drives growth, liquidity, and security.
With that new announcement, you need to keep an eye on 2 things for Swell:
TGE for $SWELL is set for Thursday,November 7th 2024
The proof of restake L2 is set to launch later in 2024 – it'll be part of the Superchain
You can get early access by depositing in the new earnETH vault.This vault earns you both yield and Swell L2 rewards at the same time.
Should Ethereum researchers accept advisory roles? Is that a reasonable demand or an impossible standard?
Dive into the conflict that's been brewing beneath the surface of the Ethereum Foundation.
What happened? Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist are two of the top Ethereum Foundation (EF) researchers (Danksharding, a key item in Ethereum's roadmap, was even named after one of them).
They were advisors to EigenLayer, a restaking platform that extends $ETH's utility. When it was revealed a couple of months ago, there was some controversy about conflict of interest. According to them, the intention was to help align EigenLayer's vision with Ethereum's goals.
Last week, both researchers announced their resignations from any advisory roles at EigenLayer. Justin also mentioned that he won't be taking any more advisor, angel investor, or similar positions.
Source: @dankrad
While this decision was widely seen as an admirable stand, the community's reaction was split into two.
Opinion #1: Yes, EF employees shouldn't have any conflicts of interest.
Since EigenLayer enables "restaking" of already staked $ETH, it has significant implications for $ETH's monetary policy and network security.
Additionally, EigenDA is a Data Availability competitor to Ethereum. Naturally, there were concerns that involvement by key EF researchers could undermine Ethereum.
Many in the community argued that researchers at EF should remain entirely impartial, to prevent any perceived or real conflicts of interest.
Opinion #2: These are impossible standards for EF employees.
Compared to their peers in big tech, Ethereum Foundation employees are criminally underpaid. So, EF employees should be able to leverage their expertise for additional compensation through advisory roles.
Entry-level software engineering managers at companies like Google or Facebook make between $300k to $450k per year, while the median salary of a software engineer is around $175k per year.
In contrast, EF salaries range from just $46k per year for a Research Scientist (Protocol Economics) to $155k for a C++ Software Engineer, with a median salary of ~$100k.
For comparison, the median salary at the Solana Foundation is $603k, which further highlights how underpaid EF employees are compared to their value in the industry.
If the current situation continues, Ethereum can lose top talent.
Edgy's take: Setting high standards that prevent EF employees from taking advisory roles may seem overly strict, but it's important.
Ethereum's value lies in its position as the best credibly neutral settlement layer — any conflict of interest can damage that credibility.
Instead of allowing top researchers to pursue side gigs, EF should simply pay its talent top dollar.
Should Ethereum Foundation ban researchers from taking advisor roles?
Scroll introduced Scroll SDK and Gadgets. They are building an L2 ecosystem like Superchain, Elastic Chain, and Polygon CDK.
Time.fun is migrating from Base to Solana. It's a protocol that allows users to tokenize and trade their time.
Jito has launched its own restaking protocol. You can now deposit assets on Jito for restaking. As of now, there's a $25M global deposit cap.
Moonshot, the Pump.fun fork from DEXScreener, has expanded to Base chain. Users will be able to launch memecoins on Base.
Curve Finance has started voting on savings accounts for $crvUSD. Upto 10% of crvUSD-generated revenue can be streamed to $scrvUSD.
dYdX has frozen its v3 contract on Ethereum. Users can now withdraw full $USDC value of their accounts.
Base has shipped fault proofs on the mainnet. Any user will be able to monitor and raise challenges if any faulty transaction is made.
Eclipse, the Ethereum L2 that runs Solana VM, has released $tETH. It combines the largest yield-generating $ETH LRTs into a single token.
Bungee Exchange has released Chain Abstracted Swaps. It isn't audited, so there could be potential issues.
mETH Protocol has introduced the season 2 of the methamorphosis campaign. Yield from various sources will directed towards $cmETH token.
UBS, a top Swiss bank, will be launching a tokenized fund on Ethereum. Their token, uMINT, will be backed by "money market instruments".
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Zircuit has airdropped their $ZRC tokens to $EIGEN stakers and holders. This was done to support the community that innovated the restasking vision.
Elixer mainnet phase 1 is live. As part of their points program, they'll distribute 750,000,000 potions over the next 10 months.
WalletConnect has released details about WCT participation rewards. They are designed to encourage sustained participation.
Space and Time has launched the testnet for SXT Chain, the blockchain for zk-proven data. They've released some quests as well.
🚀 New Launches
Astria, a decentralized sequencer network, has launched its mainnet. Any rollup can now decentralize its sequencer by joining Astria.
=nil; Foundation has launched testnet v1 for their Ethereum L2. Anyone can participate in this testnet.
KUDA Network is now live on testnet. It is a DA marketplace designed to easily connect rollups with any DA layer. It is powered by Karak Network as well.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing. Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways we can help you:
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